With Thanksgiving you can write a theme that deals with thankfulness, forgiving, and family. All wonderful elements to put in a romance story. The scenes are easy to write when you have families gathered around tables enjoying a meal, or making a pie. There are so many ways to bring the feeling of the holiday into the story and have characters interact. Even the reluctant ones. If they've had wonderful family memories and are for some reason pulling back, you can show their resistance and lure them in. If it's a character who has never had a family gathering, then you can use different holiday events to draw them in.
Christmas has the elements of caring, giving, birth, and forgiveness. Again, you can't beat those for themes of a romance or any story. Christmas, like Thanksgiving is about family and giving. If you watch the Hallmark Christmas movies you see the same plot in many of their movies but the characters and the way the couple comes together is different. Usually, in the end it's one or the others family who brings them together. My husband was upset with me because I switched channels in the middle of a Hallmark movie so I could watch The Voice. I told him the movie would be on again, they just circle them round and round. Sure enough the night he went elk hunting the movie played again. LOL And it will be on again before Christmas is over. 
The New Year brings hope, resolutions, and renewal. Everyone likes a story that in the end gives the main characters a new look at their life or a way to start over. There aren't as many stories written about the New Year, but it is a great time to set a story. There is the midnight kiss that one character or another could be either dreading and can't wait for. Lots of people propose on New Year's Eve. I see New Year's as a time of new beginnings, which also plays into a romance.Which holiday is your favorite to read stories about? Why?
A Husband for Christmas
Final Novella in the Halsey Homecoming and Halsey
Brothers Series
Shayla Halsey wanted to be home for
Christmas, but never imagined her travels would include spending the night in a
brooding stranger’s cabin. Snowballing events cause her to look inside herself
and recognize maybe it wasn’t being home she wanted as much as it was to have a
home.
Mace Walker has his life in order
and doesn’t want it disrupted again. Yet, when he discovers a woman stranded in
the snow, he has to help her—despite her overbearing and reckless fiancé. In a
matter of days, Shayla turns his life upside down and forces him to decide if
he should leave town or face the consequences.
Windtree Press / Kindle / Apple / Kobo / Nook
Award-winning author Paty Jager and her husband raise alfalfa
hay in rural eastern Oregon. On her road to publication she wrote freelance
articles for two local newspapers and enjoyed her job with the County Extension
service as a 4-H Program Assistant. Raising hay and cattle, riding horses, and
battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.
All Paty’s work has Western or
Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging
characters. Her penchant for research takes her on side trips that eventually
turn into yet another story
You can learn more about Paty at
her blog; Writing into the Sunset
her website; http://www.patyjager.net
Newsletter: Paty’s Prattle: http://eepurl.com/1CFgX
twitter @patyjag.
4 comments:
Thanks for the breakdown of the basic elements of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years romances. "A Husband for Christmas" will be a bittersweet book to read because it is the last of The Halsey series. However, I can always reread them!
Hi Judith!
Glad you liked the post. Yes, the good thing about books is you can always revisited the characters you love by re-reading the book.
Love, love, LOVE them!
Shannon, Glad to hear that! What do you like best about them?
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